You could look at this current Greenland standoff, for example, as a personal obsession of Trump’s that has no real connection to any faction of either party, that polls about as terribly in the US as it does in Europe, and that will go away as soon as he goes away or faces enough pressure from US voters or the stock market. But that’s not how it’s being treated by Carney: Canada now has to consider the possibility that the US — whether in the next election, or 20 years, or 40 years — is capable of empowering another Trump-like figure who tears up existing agreements and fundamentally does not believe in the post-World War II project of shared security and democratic values. It’s a classic text of the dissident movement against communist rule in Eastern Europe, and Havel himself was a staunchly pro-American figure — so it’s fairly stunning to see it evoked here against what Carney sees as the hypocrisies of the US-led international order that dissidents like Havel once aspired to join.
Author: Caitlin Dewey
Published at: 2026-01-21 22:40:47
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